My head bobs eagerly, and I withdraw my hand, leaving the stone in hers.
The light through the trees highlights the stone with gold, and it reflects in her pale blue eyes.
She looks like something from a storybook.
‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you.’
My cheeks flame at her praise, and I want to do whatever is possible to have more of it.
She stares at me.
‘I don’t know your name,’ she says.
Lowering my gaze, I stare at the shallow water washing over my feet.
Liam.
I want to tell her, but I’m scared of breaking the magic. And scared to speak. Nothing good ever comes from it.
‘That’s alright,’ she says. ‘You can bemy dear heart. My new best friend.’
She smiles at the stone and tucks it into the pocket of her sunny dress, freeing it from her knickers and stomping out of the stream toward a rucksack that I very much hope contains sandwiches.
‘I’m Katherine, but you can call me Kat.’
Her dear heart.
Her new best friend.
From that moment, there was no doubt that I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.
ONE
LIAM
It’s win and survive.Or lose and die. I’ve taken two lives today already. Two other desperate men just like me. Men whose demons drive them to this ring, where rich men pay to watch us bleed. The money is enough to last for months if I’m careful with it, but at what cost?
Maybe it’s just my time to lose. To end this miserable life I’ve been dealt.
A drip cascades down my face, blood or sweat, it doesn’t matter anymore.
Pain explodes across the bridge of my nose, the brute above pounding his fist into my flesh, blurring my vision. It’s tempting to just give up. There’s not a part of my body that doesn’t ache. It’s my third fight of the night, and this time it might be me who doesn’t get back up.
Apunch to the jaw throws me back fourteen years, except the fists then belonged to my dad. So many of my early years were filled with pain. A broken boy who still believed in kindness. I do my best to block the next blow, but he catches my temple, and instead of his ugly mug, I see her. The lone angel in my darkness. It’s been so long I sometimes wonder if I invented her. So desperate for someone who didn’t like to see me cry. A blond girl with a stuffed lunch bag and a never-ending amount of chatter.
My lip bursts with a sharp metallic flood that’s definitely not sweat.
I refocus on the room I’m in, some small flicker of survival flaring. The cheers of the surrounding crowd crush in from all angles. Dust motes dancing above the bruised man straddling my hips, twirling in the cheap warehouse ceiling lights. Another blow slams my face to the right, dark red staining the concrete beneath us. Not all mine.
I went to find her, and she is gone. Years of holding on for that moment of reunion, only for it to be dashed against the wall. A punch as cruel as any I’d ever had from a fist.
And with it, my will to survive.
The man pounding my face stands, thinking me beaten. Not realising that it’s my own depression that has me lying out like an abandoned old jumper. It’s enough to let the brief speck of humanity left in me win.He turns his back to me as the crowd jeers, slathering over my death already. Baying for blood like a pack of wild hounds rather than the fathers, husbands and sons they are. What would the people in their lives think of them if they saw them?
I roll onto my side, and then onto my knees, every muscle screaming in protest.
‘Fuck,’ I groan, forcing myself unsteadily to my feet. The room lurches violently as I force myself to stumble toward the braying fool, celebrating victory before he’s finished the job.
